The automation at least gives the benefit of hiring engineers, but far less engineers are hired than the large number of low wage workers who are fired.

You know, we could solve all these problems with unconditional basic income sufficient to live tolerably on. Then we could remove minimum wage entirely and appreciate automation as liberator of humanity from toil rather than fearing it as a threat. At the same time, it would smooth out the boom-bust cycle by guaranteeing a level of economic demand.

Our current model of employment is an artifact of Industrial Era, and is quickly becoming obsolete in our post-Industrial one, which is the ultimate cause of our economic problems.

The jobs lost overseas are just lost. And not only low wage jobs are lost, because as the cost of living increases on the engineers then those jobs start to go away as well.

So basically, if you work for a living, you're screwed.

I dont believe that at all. one should not be paid 20 buck an hour to pick apples, or take an order at mcdonalds, the job is not worth that much, if it were our food would cost double and we would be in the same boat. just because you now make 50 grand instead of 25 sounds good, but if the cost of everything goes up to match that change, whats the point??

Well, for starters, if a McDonald's employee needs food stamps to live, then I'm subsidising McDonald's from my taxes: I'm paying part of the income of their employees. Same goes for apple-pickers, and every other job for that matter.

Allowing a company to pay a lower than living wage results in a massive market failure, and consequently waste of resources. It's much better to force McDonald's and your local apple farm to charge the customers the price of resources - including human resources - it actually takes to deliver their product, and let market decide if it's worth them. An employee must be able to live on his wage alone with a tolerable quality of life, otherwise the employer is simply a parasite upon the economy.

Remember that minimum wage does not just affect minimum wage workers and their employers. It affects everyone who pays for services done by people working minimum wage

And it also affects everyone who sells good and services, since these minimum wage workers can now afford more. That's usually considered a good thing.

It all ripples through the economy. High minimum wages eventually make everything more expensive, not just a McDonald's hamburger.

Higher demand drives up prices, which drives up supply, which drives prices back down. The only thing that actually changes is what level of employment - utilization of production resources - results in the balance.

The bottom line is that if raising minimum wage from $7 to $700 will have a bad effect on the economy, then so will increasing $7 to $7.25.

Which makes just as much sense as saying that if rising price of a product from $7 to $7.25 will increase profits, then so will increasing it to $700.

Economic activity is increased by more people having more money to spend ?

States with the healthiest job situations were the first to increase minimum wage.

Economics: the "science" of fitting the data to whatever theory you happen to favour for ideological reasons.

Sadly, quite easy to conceive.

Without IAPs, what's the correct way to provide a limited playable version without offering the first episode without charge and offering additional episodes as IAPs?

Put the free limited and paid full versions in the store as separate apps.

But if you want some of the nasty shit, you usually know what you're about to get into. Not because school, teachers, priests or other fairy tale godmothers tell you about it. Because you effin' SEE what it does. Few people push their first time themselves. Most have some "help". From people who have been doing it for a while.

Or you mail order it from the Silk Road of the day. You keep on pushing the "dangerous drugs are used by desperate people" angle, but they're also used by people who simply want a thrill. And the fact is, at this point it's next to impossible to know how dangerous any particular substance really is. There's too much misinformation around. So people say "screw this", throw caution to the wind and do it.

And of course that's how it works with everything else, too. How many people still care about nutritional recommendations, which get revised every few years, rather than simply eating what they want?

Just take a moment to ponder how fucked up your life has to be that you consider a slow, agonizing death with a brief, occasional high a pleasant alternative.

And this is another thing: a typical drug-related death is not slow and agonizing, it's overdoze. Tobacco is the only exception I can think of, yet people who's lives are otherwise just fine smoke anyway.

If you are even slightly "high" you can not be pure and one with God.

Isn't it a cliche at this point that ancient prophets were high? Which, a more cynical person might think, is the real reason many drugs are prohibited: one possible effect is "seeing God". Whether such visions are "real" in some sense or not, they tend to prompt re-evaluation of one's life from a different - often larger - perspective. For someone who's life revolves around dominating others, what could be more frightening than for all the little plebs - or "consumers" - to suddenly see that the roles you've assigned them are, in fact, options to be chosen or discarded?

If Joe Sixpack sees God then Joe might start comparing that vision to Uncle Sam or the Invisible Hand and ask himself if these things, for all intents and purposes treated as divinely ordained in our society, are really good matches. He might even start to question whether memorizing answers to trivia questions is a good model for religion, and whether it makes sense to assume that the Creator of the Universe is obsessed with gay sex. And that might lead to some uncomfortable questions about who various religious leaders actually serve.

Well, it's also a problem if it harms your health, and I am forced to pay for your heathcare!

I am forced to pay for law and order, and the cost goes up when various jackasses stir up hatred of jews/blacks/immigrants/whatever. So should we ban free speech?

If it was entirely YOUR responsibility to pay for your health care (as it should be), then it wouldn't be a problem.

I am also forced to pay the opportunity costs of potential customers and employees being less capable due to losing their health. And, more generally, the opportunity costs associated with every stupid ideology that insists every man is an island in the sea of economy that exists independent of them.

And a lot more people would voluntarily give up smoking!

I have a hard time imagining anyone caring more about the costs of treating their lung cancer than about getting that cancer in the first place.

I am surprised at how strenuous the naysayers are and how much they seem to lack even basic technical curiousity about this new technology.

No one likes to admit they're wrong, and the more strongly you've committed to a position, the stupider you'll feel when the evidence becomes undeniable. That's why, at some point, it always stops being about issues and starts being about persons: people are not defending their position anymore, they're defending themselves. It's one of the more annoying failure modes of human intellect.

I hear a lot of talk about bitcoins, but not much about who has any sizable assets in bitcoins so I sometimes question if the entire market might just be 1 random guy scamming us all.

Who are you going to scam if you're the only one in a market? Yourself?

What would be really nice is a CAPTCHA for phones. So if someone calls me, they get a message that says "press seven if you are a human", and my phone only rings if they pass the test. It would also need to have a whitelist, since I get legitimate robo-calls from my kids' school.

Or just plain whitelist: if the calling number is on my phonebook, the call gets accepted and the phone rings, otherwise it's silently ignored.

You say it like it's a good thing.. a big country isolated, hated and full of unhappy people. What could go wrong?

The difference between then and now is that now Russia has more resources, and thus poses more of a threat. It already keeps on trying to conquer its neighbours, directly and indirectly, every chance it gets.

I live right next door to them, and I'd much rather see them happy and enjoying life, because that way they'd probably be lot less likely to start new conflicts.

I'd rather see them become a peaceful democracy too, but I don't think it's going to happen. Modern Russia is simply a new iteration of Soviet Russia, which was a new iteration of Russian Empire. It keeps on rising leaders like Putin, since they match the true spirit of the nation, and it keeps on being a threat to everyone around it, being hell-bent on empire-building as it is.

So I am honestly asking, what is BSD good for.

When exactly did "honestly" become a synonym for living under a rock? This question comes up on almost every thread where FreeBSD is mentioned, though granted this is barely more often than its major releases.

The first answer in every such thread for years now is always ZFS, but actually this just disguises how many people have been using it for years or decades and just plain like the way FreeBSD does things even if nine out of ten, or ninety nine out of a hundred, or nine hundred and ninety nine out of a thousand have different tastes.

I get intensely piqued over the implication that there's a nuisance hurdle that needs to be cleared just for existing. When "honestly" becomes a cover story for living under a rock (or an equivalent not-be-bothered-hood) this ultimately seems to resonate as the main implication.

It's especially irritating when FreeBSD predates all the Johnny-come-latelies. It would have needed to be clairvoyant to have correctly decided to not exist, so as not to strain the reputational resources of open source groupthink.

I used to use an axe, but I stopped using it when I had to cut down a tree ten-feet wide at the base. I am presently using a Husqvarna and I am perfectly happy with it but for some reason the axe retains a magical "hard core" allure. So I am honestly asking, what is an axe good for?

To agents in the NSA: It doesn't matter if 999 of 1000 of you are honest. All it takes is one G. Gordon Liddy type who ignores requirements for warrants to listen in on political opponents, and the whole thing is worthless.

It takes one agent who gets paid in gold and 999 who get paid in security and convenience. The exact same as with police or Catholic Church's abuse scandal. That's the way systematic corruption works: one bad apple didn't make the tree rotten, the tree was always rotten and the bad apple just gave it a chance to demonstrate that. And all it takes is one Snowden to blow it all wide open.

However, the government has since been modified to include supposedly everyone in the first-class citizen pool.

Or so you were told, anyway. Welcome to reality, third-class citizen.